best movie i've ever seen.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

A slow movie - build a lot of background. Depicting real emotions with slowly converging plot to the main message. One thing you realize after watching the movie is intense lifelong pain a silly mistake can lead you to.

This movie shows us the present Lee and the past Lee. Lee lost his children and he's been left in a dark alone. Joe had helped him get well and Lee has been getting over the distress. And one day,Joe died and his will says that Lee is going to be Patrick's guardian. Lee refuses it first but he decides to be his guardian after all. And then the new life starts and the movie starts showing us Lee's past. Lee's felt a great responsible to his children's loss and he's not sure if he can take care of Patrick. We can see Lee's distress of the past some times on the movie. On the other hand,Patrick doesn't look so sad at Joe's loss. But we see Patrick get sick when he sees the frozen chicken and I think that expresses that Patrick's had the sad feelings and he's been patient. Those things happen between Lee and Patrick and they develop together. But at the last, Lee decides not to take care of Patrick as his parent. The complicated situation is built between them but their relationship is never broken. At the last scene,they ride on the boat and go fishing as they did when Patrick was little. This movie is about the development of each people,Lee,Patrick,Lee's ex-wife Randi and so on. This movie is about their lives' journeys.

I didn't really enjoy Moonlight or La La Land. This film would have been my pick for best picture that year. I always said Casey Affleck was underrated and a much better actor than his Brother, but I guess he isn't underrated anymore after this film. Great story, brilliant acting and despite so much tragedy in this film, you end up with a smile on your face and are reminded that no matter what comes at you, life keeps going.

The appropriate use of music in films is one of the crucial problems of current cinema, especially in American movies. It is a formula inherited from Tiomkin, Steiner, Waxman, Korngold and Herrmann, and the filmmakers for whom they musicalized: together they packed the complete product (as in "Gone with the Wind"), without knowing when to stop the music. However, almost a century has passed, sound has made great advances and the effect of omnipresent music has become obnoxious. Was it necessary to punctuate the tragedy of Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) for eight endless minutes, since the moment he goes out to the store one fatidic night, until the scene when he leaves the office of the lawyer who has read his brother's will, with cloying adagio by Albinoni or whoever composed it? For me, the music selection is the detrimental aspect of the film: it has nothing to do with the history, but with the unrestrained sentimentality of director Kenneth Lonergan. I liked the uncle-nephew interplay and all the great drama about pain and death ... The excellent performances by the whole cast are enough to transmit everything! Lee's silences and fists of anger, the panic attack of his nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges), the dialogue of guilt and forgiveness between Lee and his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams), the loneliness of Sandy's mother, Jill (Heather Burns)... The inclusion of classics is redundant and mawkish (and the "house composer", Lesley Barber, was caught up, judging from his title chorale), gaining more presence than such an adequate soundtrack as the voices of Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald or The Ink Spots. The director did not contain himself. The classics were good for "Barry Lyndon." Kubrick excelled at that. Even the hyper-contrast between "The Blue Danube" and the spacecraft in "2001, a Space Odyssey" was a brilliant move. But Mr. Lonergan is no Kubrick. With 10 or 15 minutes less, a selection of the American songbook and the classics saved for when he drives his car down the road, Kenneth Lonergan would have made a perfect film.